Sunday, November 30, 2008

CT stands for Creative Team. As a CT member I take digital scrapbooking kits that the designers at SAS make and I use them to make layouts. It helps to advertise their kits for them and gives me a lot of neat stuff to work with! Thank you for your comments. I'm glad to see someone is enjoying my blog!

Sherah at http://skrapperdigitals.blogspot.com - because she is very talented - you should see the kit she made for me at SAS (Jan Kit)!! when I was on her CT. She is still my friend and I haven't bugged her for a while.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our family and friends! We hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Ours is being a little cold and rainy so far but we welcome both the cool temps and the rain. Besides, being with family makes us warm and cozy again. We have truly LOVED having Chris and Ky and their families here this week. They are staying out with Chad and Stephen R. and their families and we have been able to go out to Queen Creek to visit with everyone. Will be going out there again tomorrow to spend a good part of the day.

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We are hoping to go see Twilight this weekend. Don't know yet if it's going to be a girl's afternoon out with the Dads and Grandpa babysitting all the kids, or whether it will be a date night for the grownups. But we plan on going one way or the other while we are all together. Should be a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to it.

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This Grandma feels content again. Being able to finally see the new little granddaughters for the first time and being able to cuddle them and love them has filled me up inside. Having three of them gives us lots of babies to share when we are all together. Plus seeing the older grandkids too. All of them are sooooo precious to me. I really LOVE being a Grandma. I just long to live closer to all of them and miss them so when we can't see them. Having us all together again has been like Christmas come early for me. The only thing that could make it any better is if Shane and Sherri and their family could be here too. But that isn't possible right now. So phone calls over the holiday will have to do.

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I've been super busy with my new job as CT member for Stone Accents Studio. So far I have requested three kits and have made all the required layouts and got them posted everywhere. You can see them here. I put both the 12 x 12 sizes and the 8.5 x 11 ones. It's hard to decide which ones to post. So many times the smaller sizes look nicer with the extra papers and all. Anyway, here they are. You can click on them to bring them up bigger.

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This is the Winter Wonderland Mega Kit which is a collab kit made by several of the designers at SAS. You can click on the SAS link over there on the right hand side in my Favorite Places To Visit list to go check out the full kits and see all the fun going on over at SAS. I only did the 12 x 12 size on these first two layouts.

These next few layouts are done with the Fairyland kit by Monika Designs.

These next few are made using the Noah Kit by Digitreats. I really love this kit. There are so many cute papers and elements to use on boy pages. And I love the colors.

And that's about it for this time! Simple Pleasures in my life right now:

Having five of my children and their families all together for Thanksgiving.

A telephone to call Shane and Sherri on!

The RAIN!!!

Cooler weather - it actually feels like fall and winter today!

Having Christmas up! Yes, I actually got us decorated early this year!!

White twinkle lights on the tree to leave on all night from now til whenever we take the tree down.

Being able to listen to Christmas music.

All the neat Christmas and Thanksgiving programs on TV.

Stephen coming home from work a little early today and having a four day weekend for us to enjoy having him with us.

Getting to take Frankie out to run at his trainer's house tomorrow. He needs the exercise and loves going out there. And I don't have to worry about us being away from home and him being home alone for so many hours when we can take him there. So it's my treat too!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I am still here! Today is the anniversary of my Dad's passing. It has been 13 years and still feels like yesterday to me. I really miss him and Mom. Life changed so drastically for me when they passed away. It was a big life changing event for me.

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We are looking forward to seeing Ky and Rachel and Chris and Melany and all the grandkids for Thanksgiving! Can't wait to get my hugs and kisses and give out some love to everyone. It's going to be a wonderful holiday for us! And it will be so special to have our three new little granddaughters together for the first time ever. I plan on getting lots of pictures as well as getting my grandma hugs and cuddles from each one of them.

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I have some fun news! Last night I got an email from one of the gals at Stone Accents Studios - SAS - which is a big digital scrapbooking site. I do a lot of their challenges and post many of my layouts in their gallery. They have asked me to join their CT - Creative Team - for their store!! They like my work and want me to work for them. I'll get the big mega kit each month as well as kits from any of the designers I choose in exchange for doing my layouts using them and then posting them on their site as well as two other websites and my blog here. I also have to make comments on other peoples' layouts and participate in the challenges and on the forums when needed. I'm sooooo excited and can't believe they asked me!! It will be a little more work than doing it just for the fun of it. But it isn't that much more than I'm already doing FOR fun already. Just a few little extra responsibilities. And I get wonderful goodies in exchange for it. Can't beat that!! I will be starting as soon as they get the first kit to me.

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In the meantime, here are some layouts I've been doing and posting on SAS. If you want to check SAS out they are listed in my Favorite Places To Visit list on the right hand side here. Click on their link and it will take you to my new place of work!! It's an awesome site and the ladies there are so nice. I will be in good company.

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Now on to the layouts! Nearly everything here was done for a challenge. A few were just for fun. The first two are of Ky and Rachel's wedding day. You can click on any of the layouts to bring up a bigger view of it.

My Dad playing Santa:

Kyran on the Olson's motorcycle!!

Yes, that's an apple core balanced on his nose!

Done for a quote challenge:

The early days of the Gang when Karen was the only girl!!

Kyran in his infant seat.

Stephen R:

These two always had such mischievious looks on their faces. Like they had something going on that the rest of us didn't know about - YET!! Chris and Ky:

The challenge for this layout was to use that font you can hardly read. It says Brothers, Best Friends and A Stick! I was excited to do this page as the photo was perfect to go along with the fact that the Stick was just put in the Toy Hall of Fame this month. What a magical toy a stick is! The little pic is of the guy holding the display of the Stick that they put in the Toy Hall of Fame.

This one of Ky was for a scraplift challenge.

And that's about it for now.

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The weather is beautiful here! It's going to be cooler leading up to Thanksgiving Day. It was 86 degrees today but will be going back into the 70's for the holiday. Plus we might get a little rain????? I hope so. But not on Thanksgiving. It needs to wait a day or two longer and not rain on the holiday.

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Thanks for looking at my blog! Check out SAS. Especially if you are into scrapbooking. There are lots of fun layouts to view and digital scrapbooking challenges to participate in. And the posting gifts are really nice.

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AND....Remember to look for the Simple Pleasures in life. Right now we all need to do that. With times being so hard and getting harder, those Simple Pleasures are going to be important to us. Have a great day!

About Me

Married for 45 years to a wonderful guy. We have 6 children. Five sons - all married now - and one daughter who is still at home with us. We have 26 precious grandchildren. We also have a Chinese Crescent/Boston Terrier dog named Teddi Bear.

Special Thanks!

Special thanks to Sherah Kraan of Skrapper Digitals who made the Jan Mega Kit special for me while I was on her CT. I used it to make my header. This is a really lovely kit. All Americana and country. Tons of papers and elements. You can find this kit at SAS.